Bret Stephens Quotes

The thing I hate the most in any kind of writing is self-righteousness. Where you pretend you don't have the same kinds of flaws your subject has.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Whenever you are faced with someone who has made far more errors in judgment and far more mistakes than you, you have a tendency to get on your high horse.

Most open letters undoubtedly come from a good place, rising out of genuine outrage or concern or care. There is, admittedly, also a smugness to most open letters: a sense that we, as the writers of such letters, know better than those to whom the letters are addressed. We will impart our opinions to you, with or without your consent.

That Newt Gingrich or any mainstream Republican has the nerve to look down from what they perceive as their moral mountaintop at anyone is laughable.

I don't understand some people, using biblical terms to criticize me when this is just a game.

Are you sick and tired of these moralizing moralizers imposing their morality on the rest of us? I know I am.

None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves.

Self-righteousness has killed more people than smoking.

You're just poor cornball provincial people, you critics; you just don't know what the hell you're talking about.

I have a zero tolerance for sanctimonious morons who try to scare people.

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

Indians are sometimes accused of being condescending toward Westerners and of being excessively preachy in their attitude toward other nations. That accusation is sometimes correct.

I don't want you to think I'm better than people or that I know better than people.

In the E.U., there are always morally superior people who think they have to educate the others.

The general tendency [is] to be censorious of the vices to which one has not been tempted.

Tolerance is love sick with the sickness of haughtiness.

Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace.

Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy--also cheap.

The sin of certainty leaves no room for the rest of us.

How dare you put yourself in that position where you are the moral judge?

Like power in any shape, a full stomach always holds a dose of insolence, and this expresses itself first of all in the well-fed lecturing the starving.

It comes to pass that men do so magnify their own opinions, and are as censorious of any that differ from them in lesser things

… when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don’t happen to know it.

Arrogance is a creature. It does not have senses. It has only a sharp tongue and the pointing finger.